Today, America conducts democracy by opinion polling. What do the people think about Ukraine? Let’s be guided by that. But what if the people are not thinking straight? What if they are burdened by emotional distress, debilitating physical ailments, unhappy employment? What if they did not pay attention in school, and did not get a college education? What if they did get a degree, but after college they have not cracked a serious book about public policy in years? What if they blindly parrot what self-interested political party leaders beg them to believe? What if the average citizen polled on a given day has never read an actual book of American history, or any other history? How good is our bright, shiny, breaking-news poll then? It becomes a measure of our ignorance, not our wisdom. Democracy requires knowledge and participation, not polls.
